Set in the fictional town of Crane's View, New York, the familiar setting of earlier Carroll novels, THE WOODEN SEA also brings back the character of Police Chief Frannie McCabe. Crane's View is a small, comfortable town nestled along the river, a place where nothing out of the ordinary would happen- and doesn't, to the casual observer. From the moment a three-legged dog limps into the comfortable life of Police Chief Frannie McCabe and drops dead at his feet, McCabe finds himself thrust into a new world of unaccountable miracles and disturbing wonders. The small town of Crane's View, New York, has long been a reassuringly familiar place for Frannie, a haven full of small comforts and domestic harmony, but now he finds himself afflicted by strange and inexplicable omens, such as a mysterious, multicolored feather that keeps insinuating itself into his past, present, and future, all of which now converge to throw Frannie's once ordinary life into doubt. Like it or not, Frannie has come face-to-face with the uncanny, and what he does over the next few days may have unforseen consequences for the entire world.

A rich stew of intrigue, wonder, and redemption, The Wooden Sea is Jonathan Carroll's most ambitious and visionary work to date.

buy now

• Reviews •

"The Wooden Sea, by Jonathan Carroll (Tor; $23.95). Frannie McCabe, a mellowing middle-aged former bad boy who is now the police chief of a Hudson Valley town, opens the trunk of his car to discover the body of the pet pit bull he has just buried. But then things get weird, and not just Carl Hiaasen weird; McCabe finds himself teamed up with his seventeen-yearold self in a time-travel fantasy-thriller, set almost entirely in his home town but involving aliens, cold fusion, and a sinister twenty-first-century Dutch entrepreneur. The result is a quirky piece of intelligent pop that is also surprisingly moving." – The New Yorker

"In ''The Wooden Sea,'' Carroll confounds the genre-rigid standards of most literary criticism, crossing from fantasy to psychological thriller to science ficuion as easily as Fraonie ventures back and forth in time. In the end, whether what happens in this novel is mischief or metaphysics doesn't really matter. What does is that Carroll turns them both into his own distinctive kind of intelligent entertainment." – The New York Times